Rabbi Ovadia Yosef

Senior Israeli officials including National Security Advisor Ya’akov Amidror and Interior Minister Eli Yishai held what the Algemeiner calls a “secret meeting” with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, on Friday. Yosef, in his state-funded role as head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages, is the governing coalition party’s spiritual leader, while Yishai is its political chief.

Some want the 91-year-old rabbi to support it, others to oppose it. At least one visit, in which the rabbi was briefed on Iran’s nuclear program, came at the behest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is battling for support in the cabinet to strike Iran.

One of the visitors to Yosef’s Jerusalem home was National Security Council head Ya’akov Amidror, accompanied by Interior Minister and Shas political leader Eli Yishai, the Kikar Hashabat website reported.

Yishai reportedly objects to an Israeli attack on Iran in the current circumstances, although he has not made his position clear in public.

It is not known whether Amidror or any of the others succeeded in persuading Yosef. However, on Saturday evening, a day after his meeting with Amidror, Yosef said in his weekly sermon: ‘You know what situation we’re in, there are evil people, Iran, about to destroy us. … We must pray before [the almighty] with all our heart.’

Yosef is one of Israel’s most incendiary public figures. In 2000, he claimed that the Holocaust was not “all for nothing,” because its Jewish victims were “the reincarnation of earlier souls who sinned [and who] returned … to atone for their sins,” before “call[ing] the Palestinians ‘snakes’ and ‘accursed, wicked ones,’ and cit[ing] Talmudic commentaries to claim that God was ‘sorry he created’ all Arabs.”

The following year, Yosef said of Arabs, ”It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.”

“There was a tsunami and there are terrible natural disasters, because there isn’t enough Torah study… black people reside there (in New Orleans). Blacks will study the Torah? (God said) let’s bring a tsunami and drown them.”

“Hundreds of thousands remained homeless. Tens of thousands have been killed. All of this because they have no God.”

And in 2010, Yosef provoked a firestorm of outrage and criticism, even from pillars of the American Zionist establishment like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, by comparing non-Jews to farm animals and saying they were only fit to serve Jews.

‘Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,’ he said in his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat.

According to Yosef, the lives of non-Jews in Israel are safeguarded by divinity, to prevent losses to Jews.

‘In Israel, death has no dominion over them… With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.’

‘This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew,’ Yosef said.

‘Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat.

That is why gentiles were created,’ he added.

Yosef may hold the unenviable but impressive title of Israel’s most prominent and outspoken racist, perhaps in close competition with fellow Shas leader Yishai, who famously said in May, “Most of those people arriving here are Muslims who think the country doesn’t belong to us, the white man.” Now he has also emerged as a pivotal decision-maker on the launch of a regional war with unknown, but certainly lethal and wide-ranging consequences.

The current position of Shas, as stated by its chairman Eli Yishai who is also a member of the eight-minister security forum, opposes a military strike against Iran. However, if Rav Ovadia is convinced and announces his support for a strike his declaration would bring about a shift in his party’s views.

141 Responses

The cream of the israeli state kissing the butt a vile racist. Imagine the hell that would erupt if a couple of American Cabinet officials met with the Grand Wizard of the KKK. That’s exactly the equivalent of what’s going on here.

This tool, Yusuf (and it really is telling that the israeli theological community hasn’t done what needs to be done to strip him of his rank as a rabbi), is nothing but a KKK-style bigot, adhering to the eqivalence of Christian-White-Power ideology.

This tool, Yusuf (and it really is telling that the israeli theological community hasn’t done what needs to be done to strip him of his rank as a rabbi), is nothing but a KKK-style bigot, adhering to the eqivalence of Christian-White-Power ideology.

Surprisingly enough Menachim Begin obtained a ruling from Ovadia Yosef in 1973 that the Ethiopian Beta Israel community were descendants of the Tribe of Dan and should be brought to Israel to help counter the demographic threat.

The Chief Rabbis of Israel are bought and paid for politicians and bureaucrats. Here is how the selection process is described:

The defining characteristic of the chief rabbi selection process in Israel is that involves secular as well as religious communities.
. . .
But the net has been cast so wide that instead of having a selection committee there is a panel that is larger than the Knesset – and with almost as much politicking. There are 120 members of the Knesset; the board tasked with choosing the country’s two chief rabbis, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardi, has 150.
. . .
The secular members on the panels are mostly politicians, national and local – or their nominees – who themselves have deals that they want to cut with each other.

The process encourages the selection of candidates who are politically acceptable and inoffensive to all concerned, but not the country’s true rabbinic leaders.

The Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis are way out of their depth. Israel is out of control, doped out on militarism and Jewish exceptionalism and the religious leaders are right in the middle of it. They don’t have the balls or the brains to shout “stop !”. It is probably too late anyway.

The Baal Shem Tov must be turning in his grave.

1967 was a disaster for Judaism. It is only now that the full consequences of those 6 days are being made clear.

And BTW to those who say “don’t conflate Jews with Zionists”- 72% of UK Jews classed themselves as Zionist in 2010

Seafoid, I would say that the Jewish people, weakened by the Holocaust, gave in to disaster in 1948. And that’s where the battle seems to be shaping up. We can now nitter another 10 years away arguing about how much of a favor we are doing the Gentiles by giving up Zionism, even tho we could have taken over the entire world with it. The alternative is admitting that we’re pretty goddam dumb, and you know, speaking of core Jewish values… I think they would sooner admit the Talmud does make you an Imperialist than admit that.

Senior Israeli officials including National Security Advisor Ya’akov Amidror and Interior Minister Eli Yishai held what the Algemeiner calls a “secret meeting” with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, on Friday. Yosef, in his state-funded role as head of Shas’s Council of Torah Sages, is the governing coalition party’s spiritual leader, while Yishai is its political chief.

Israel is so different from the USA. We are fortunate that the state is structurally far removed from religions, let alone solely with the sects of one religion. The fairly recent trend of creating “faith-based” initiatives and government apparatchiks to deal with that was a move in the wrong direction.

This man is so full of hate-based exceptionalism. Every time I read about him I wonder how many people in Israel and elsewhere actually believe his supremacist ideas, and with them, the other side of that coin – the inferiority of blacks, Arabs, goyim – anyone who isn’t in his tribe.

It is obvious that racism is rapidly escalating in Israel. And it is making a comeback in the USA. But public figures at least attempt to distance themselves from the fringe here, even when they quietly support the goals of our racists.

Billy Graham was for a long time the so-called religious figure that Presidents had to call upon in crisis for, public consumption. As bad as Graham (and his son) are, he is nothing compared to this awful, awful man.

Philip,
We in America make weaker Koolaid, e.g., Beiden’s “shackles” comment. Or, even weaker, that GOP guy’s comment on “legitimate rape” and “secretions” of a victim making her less likely to have a baby in such circumstances. And, of course, we have the verbiage against Islam from the likes of Geller.

— I live in Wasilla, where the doses of koolaid sometimes seem Jonestownesque. And I’ve been engaging these superstitious zombies for decades.

Still, I see a glimmer of hope that some day rational thinking might again gain an upper hand here. 25 years ago, Wasilla was left-of-center, at least in Alaskan terminology. I have far less hope that Israel can step back from the brink of the black hole of myth-driven superstition, hatred and nihilistic exceptionalism.

Former Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel saying these racist, elitist, violent comments. How many other Rabbi’s feel like this? Not the fellas I met at the last two Move over Aipac/Occupy Aipac events. Unless they are hiding these attitudes. But sure did not sense that. Any Jew, Muslim, Christian , Buddhist, Hindu who professes horrific thinking like this should be kept in a tight corner unable to promote such terrible views. The only religious leader that I have been remotely drawn to is the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu. The Dalai Lama has said all religions have their place. One not better than the other. Thank you for a few sane religious leaders

this talk you get from fringe zionists, and most starkly from some talmudic extremists…
sounds just like the protocols.

i am serious, i think a higher percentage of jewish extremists might believe the protocols the work of elite jews, than non-jewish europeans believe such. 2 israelis, non religious, told me “we control the world” when i was living there. WTF is going on in these people’s minds? further, why are jewish extremists seemingly attempting to *conform* to the protocols? yes, i am sure this will be censored, but i think we need an analysis of the insane manner in which modern right wing jewish elites are enamored with the *ideas* set forth in the protocols, and almost abjectly utilizing those concepts in their political machinations…

@ Mooser
Well, Harvey Pekar might do a real one if he were alive, but it wouldn’t be out until he was dead, and then, it would be sabotaged by his illustrator friend because Harvey’s work was too hard on the real Elders.

this secret meeting between an israeli security advisor, interior minister and a former chief sephardic rabbi who wants to annihilate arabs brings to mind the 1942 gathering in berlin in which “the final solution for the jewish question” (industrial style mass extermination) was decided upon. does the meeting between this rabidly racist rabbi and government officials portend the development of a zionist “final solution on the arab question?”

I have seen this idiot rabbi’s drivel before, but my question is how many followers does he have in Israel?
Anyone know?
And would they make a difference in suporting Netanyahu’s war plan?
I am convinced most of Washington doesn’t give a damn about what the US public thinks about attacking Iran. Does Netanyahu care what Israelis think?

This meeting could be just another Israeli propaganda gambit to rattle the war cage.

“I have seen this idiot rabbi’s drivel before, but my question is how many followers does he have in Israel?”

Shas has around 9% of the vote and he is the spiritual leader of religious Sephardim who vote Shas so that’s at least 500,000 people and a very important wedge in Israeli politics . I guess there are also Sephardi Orthodox in the States

The spiritual leader of Israel’s ultra-orthodox Shas party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has provoked outrage with a sermon calling for the annihilation of Arabs.

“It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable,” he was quoted as saying in a sermon delivered on Monday to mark the Jewish festival of Passover.

Rabbi Yosef is one of the most powerful religious figures in Israel, He is known for his outspoken comments and has in the past referred to the Arabs as “vipers”.

Through his influence over Shas, Israel’s third largest political party, he is also a significant political figure. As founder and spiritual leader of the political party Shas, Rabbi Yosef is held in almost saintly regard by hundreds of thousands of Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin.

The Palestinian Authority has condemned the sermon as racist and is calling on international organisations to treat the rabbi as a war criminal.

‘Arab terrorists’

Rabbi Yosef said in his sermon that enemies have tried to hurt the Jewish people from the time of the exodus from Egypt to this day.

“The Lord shall return the Arabs’ deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world,” he said.

Shas spokesman, Yitzhaq Suderi defended the rabbi, saying his remarks referred only to “Arab murderers and terrorists” and not the Arab people as a whole.

This next comment isn’t really on point, but, what the heck (not the first time I’ve done this!):

The Passion of Christ. I haven’t really studied this film, so I don’t feel confident saying that it did or did not have anti-Semitic elements in it. (After Gibson’s rant, I can see why people might assume it would.) However, my impression of the film after seeing it when it first came out (before the rant) was that it wasn’t anti-Semitic. Okay, okay, I’ll admit that there was a tiny half second there when I was mad at the Jews–but only in the way that I was mad at the English after seeing Braveheart. (Those #!!## English!)

But I remember reading various reviews about the film. I believe it was Leon Wieseltier at the New Republic who argued that the film was a clear example of visual anti-Semitism (he didn’t use exactly that phrase, but it was something like that) because of the gold on the rabbis’ garments. So I guess the formula was gold = money = Jews = anti-Semitism.

But take a look at Rabbi Ovadia Yosef! Gold! That anti-Semite!

(I should note here in the interest of being ecumenical that the garments of Christian and Muslim clergy are often just as if not more showy and garish.)

One other matter: Could it be possible that the ADL had a file on Gibson and knew he was anti-Semitic long before the film or his outburst? (Apparently, they kept files on hundred in California for many years. Also, it’s easy to believe that Gibson might have made a similar outburst at, say, a Hollywood party which pre-dated the film.) Hence, when word of his filming of the Passion came out the ADL was ready to condemn it as anti-Semitic. So, in other words, their judgment was based on what they knew about Gibson and not on, say, the script or the film alone.

This is only speculation on my part; I can’t say I know what happened one way or the other.

I’m not sure what the sum total of the grounds for claiming Mel Gibson is anti-semitic actually are, but I’m aware of only two things:

First, The Passion. That’s only anti-semitic to the extent that the New Testament is, as far as I can see. If the argument is that Christianity is itself inherently anti-semitic, have the integrity to say so. I think that film and its contents was motivated by Mel Gibson’s Christianity, not by any putative anti-semitism.

Second, that rant at the Jewish cop. Ever dealt with Australians? This is what they do — when they’re giving somebody grief, they play hard ball. If the cop had been Muslim, that’s what we would have heard about. If he’d been fat, it would have been that.

@ straightline
Among the regular pro-Israel commenters at The Atlantic, they’ve intentionally replaced the term “anti-semite” and “self-hating jew” with “jew baiter” and “jewbaiting.” In The Atlantic’s article on Mondowiess blasting this website, the comments below the line, some 140+, this latter term is discussed and used liberally as a more effective label for Nazi sites such as this one, as they call it. Phil and his writing is regarded as a good example of a jew-baiter jew baiting.

@ straightline, this site ate my extended comment, but the gist of it was the pro-Israel commentors on The Atlantic have substituted “jew baiting” as they think sites like Mondoweiss have hijacked the term “anti-semite” by reducing its effectiveness. Over there Mr Weiss and Mr Kane are real jew baiters. In fact, according to them, this site is chock full of jew baiters.

I’ve always suspected that the rant was caused by the reaction to The Passion of the Christ. Now, I don’t know Mel Gibson, and for all I know he could be the biggest bigot in the world or the opposite, but it appeared to me that he was really blindsided by the claims that his film was antisemitic, because it basically followed the Gospels. I don’t think he was aware that some Jews think that Christianity is simply an antisemitic religion and I suspect that he expected his Jewish friends and associates in the industry to counter the assaults on him and his film by the usual suspects: the bigot Foxman, the lunatic Hikind, etc. (While I am an atheist, I have to concur with the argument that what Foxman and his ilk demand is nothing less than a repudiation of the Christian faith.)

When that support didn’t come; when the film industry — which has a large Jewish contingent — basically threw him to the wolves, I think he felt betrayed. Take that betrayal, add a lot of alcohol and some clear anger management and mental health issues, and one can almost predict the rant at the Jewish cop.

This isn’t to say this is right; it wasn’t. The cop was wholly innocent. It’s just to say that the second incident may be a misguided and misdirected reaction to the first incident.

“Take that betrayal, add a lot of alcohol and some clear anger management and mental health issues,”.

I also seem to remember that he was arrested the night that israel attacked Qana, Lebanon (where jesus supposedly performed his first miracle). And it wasn’t the first attack on Qana either. I know my christian friends were very offended and mad about this attack and they’re American.

Oddly enough I didn’t see the Passion of Christ until recently on TV since I’m not much of a movie goer. But it was very moving, really grabbed your emotions.
However I didn’t see anything anti semitic in it and since I was aware of the controversy about it I was on the lookout for it.
One thing that might have influenced Gibson in making this movie is his father is a big , big, big, Catholic.

Well, as a former chief Sephardic rabbi, what racist statements he has made are entirely in keeping with what the late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson said. Or for that matter, some writings by Moses Maimonides.

Religious fundamentalism is ugly. What we’re dealing with here is even more extreme than, for example, Salafi and Wahhabi Islam. I would only compare it to the white supremacist Christian Identity movement.

I have come to beleive that any “fundamentalism” or blind trust/faith is destructive to society.Whether it is intellectuall,political,secular or academics. The blind faith in the redmptive powers of Nazism ( for Ayrans -Nordic ) or of Communism ( for masses of oppressed ) or in social interpretaion of Darwinism ( I guees even Darwin saw final fullfillmnet of human potential in the late arrival of AngloSaxon on the scene) and in the romantic views of future in literary activities Whitman have a lot to do with the slow death of 3rd World,destrution of weak in Germany, or of ecology and environment in Russia and all of those and more in case of US-UK>

The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote that “There is apparently much truth in the belief that the wonderful progress of the United States, as well as the character of the people, are the results of natural selection” Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Beacon Press, Boston. 1955. page 179 of 204.https://wikis.nyu.edu/ek6/modernamerica/index.php/Imperialism/SocialDarwinism

A similar sounding allusion has been made in the book “Imperial Cruise”.

Good Lord, you don’t understand the work you’re quote mining. That’s not Social Darwinism, he’s talking about the development of intelligence and morality in humans via natural selection. For love of pete, you didn’t even quote the whole sentence.

And no, reporting what Galton wrote about the effect of migration on the success of North America, in the context of the ability of natural selection to have formed human morality and intelligence, is not a statement supporting Social Darwinism. Learn to think, for once, and not just ape the ramblings of mental midgets who are threatened by science.

Darwin tried to explain a human phenomenon of the succeess of differnet tribes,nationalities,ethnicities over other or within itself .He invoked existence of varying tendencies ,instincts,and proclovities at individual and also in group level that determine success or failures of two things – successful propgation and the access to the material opporutinities ( resources,land,conducive environment ,creation of group coherence-loyalty,introducing morality to safeguard group-interest etc ) .There was another level of complexitiy determined by active denial of those opportunities by war,by introduction of noxious elemements in enviornment,acting actively to undermine group behaviors of the opposite camps or moving to areas populated by technically -less-developed tribes or socially- less cohesive people. Drawin brought other elements in explaining the rise of one nation above another including presecne or abscence of amoral behaviors,poor plannings or lack of foresight . He did not endorse or support or judge these mechansim morally .It was just a reality operating across the board. but this phenomena have been studied and embraced by social Darwinist and this contiues to be used to export excesses of one group over another. They often use this understanding to do social engineering abroad or within. Destruction of environments,incarceration of large number of young people,limiting eductaional and employemnt opportunities,making only risky or dead-end careers available ( military,unsafe water/food/dangerous jobs with poor safety features and institutionalization of the system by other means make any upward mobility impossible). Abroad ,same ideas play starting with again destrcution of familiar institution without replacement of better one,destroying infratsructures,limiting availability of resources,introducing toxic material in the environment and usurping social and economic oppurtinities. Here lies the strengths of social Darwinism without Darwin. The “fittest’ is created not by natural process but by calculated human behvaiors. This is perversion but very effective one.But here the remark by Darwin on permanence of Angol saxon prominence could not be expalined by his own observation. He may not have meant it but it sure has added to the passion of the Social Darwinist.

OK Siberia, I agree you do ramble. The point is that social Darwinism as it emerged in the late 19th century was not a product of Darwin’s work. It was Herbert Spenser and some Germans that applied Darwin’s thinking to human class’s and race that gave rise to what we now call ‘social Darwinism’. His comments on race were minor and his comments on class almost non-existent. I have read much of his writings and from what I saw he was not a racist. To the extent that he did write about race much of it sounds patronizing to modern ears, but he was not a racist, certainly not by the standards of his day.

traintosiberia, give up while you’re behind. You simply have no idea what you are talking about an no comprehension of what Darwin was writing and why. He was not talking about group selection, but natural selection on individuals. If you don’t see the huge, giant, unmistakable problem in your very first sentence, which carries forth in your discussion about nations, and if you don’t understand why it is important and wholly crushes your claims, then you are simply too uninformed to have a reasoned opinion on this subject.

I don’t know if you are one of the pathetic people who oppose evolution because of some silly near pre-historic superstitions like the bible or whether you are simply ill informed, but trust me when I tell you that you are wrong in believing that Darwin endorsed “social Darwinism.”

I believe in the theory of Drawinsim ( i.e Natural Selection ). I dont consider he endorsed social darwinism. He did not endorse anything .He observed,gathered and calculated data and reached a theory and communicated with peopel like Wallace , Huxley,Carl Vogt and other. He had no doubt about the physical evolution. His struggeled with the isssue of mental evolution but still beleived that natural selction had affected the development of mental faculty more than any other variables.
He has touched upon the influences of various factor on groups of individuals in ceratin profession ( sailors , or soldiers . Watchmakers and outdoor activist on visual acquity) withing a few genartaion but mostly he has referred to large groups and effects over many generations .
He has addressed the issue of differneces between developed nations and not so civilized. Here the role of bonding,morality,shame,and care for fellow human beings ,divison of properties ,geogarphy,migration ,war have been emphasized, claiming rightfully that “civilization checks the action of natural selection”. I think social darwisnt have misused this part effectively and continues to do even today
He beleived ” there exists in man some close relation between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties is supported by the comparison of the skulls of savage and civilised races, of ancient and modern people, and by the analogy of the whole vertebrate series ” Sure his fisrt assertion ( knowingly or unknowingly by US anthropologoist in late 19th century to provide scientific support for exisetence of racial superiority ) is wrong but his impression was not racial though his supportive quoting of “Dr. J. Barnard Davis has proved (79. ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ 1869, p. 513.), by many careful measurements, that the mean internal capacity of the skull in Europeans is 92.3 cubic inches; in Americans 87.5; in Asiatics 87.1; and in Australians only 81.9 cubic inches.” might have had same effects and used by racist.
let me conclude by saying I find both you guys( ToiVo and Tanaka ) are interesting.

[EXCERPTS] The pride of the Israeli navy is rocking gently in the swells of the Mediterranean, with the silhouette of the Carmel mountain range reflected on the water’s surface. To reach the Tekumah, you have to walk across a wooden jetty at the pier in the port of Haifa, and then climb into a tunnel shaft leading to the submarine’s interior. The navy officer in charge of visitors, a brawny man in his 40s with his eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, bounces down the steps. When he reaches the lower deck, he turns around and says: “Welcome on board the Tekumah. Welcome to my toy.”
He pushes back a bolt and opens the refrigerator, revealing zucchini, a pallet of yoghurt cups and a two-liter bottle of low-calorie cola. The Tekumah has just returned from a secret mission in the early morning hours.
The navy officer, whose name the military censorship office wants to keep secret, leads the visitors past a pair of bunks and along a steel frame. . .. . . “This was all built in Germany, according to Israeli specifications,” the navy officer says,”and so were the weapons systems.” The Tekumah, 57 meters long and 7 meters wide, is a showpiece of precision engineering, painted in blue and made in Germany. To be more precise, it is a piece of precision engineering made in Germany that is suitable for equipping with nuclear weapons.
• No Room for DoubtDeep in their interiors, on decks 2 and 3, the submarines contain a secret that even in Israel is only known to a few insiders: nuclear warheads, small enough to be mounted on a cruise missile, but explosive enough to execute a nuclear strike that would cause devastating results. This secret is considered one of the best kept in modern military history. Anyone who speaks openly about it in Israel runs the risk of being sentenced to a lengthy prison term.
Research SPIEGEL has conducted in Germany, Israel and the United States, among current and past government ministers, military officials, defense engineers and intelligence agents, no longer leaves any room for doubt: With the help of German maritime technology, Israel has managed to create for itself a floating nuclear weapon arsenal: submarines equipped with nuclear capability. . .

“MY COMMENT: And to think that this country (Israel) has hundreds of nukes. And German-built subs to launch them from!”

The irony is that these submarines make total nonsense of Israel’s claims that Iran poses an ‘existential threat’ to her. Even if Iran somehow acquired a nuclear weapon, and somehow acquired technology that could deliver it through Israel’s missile defenses, and somehow convinced herself it would be worth the other consequences to her to fire it off, and somehow managed to do so in spite of the entire IAF making a death run on the launch site — then Israel’s submarines could and probably would reduce Iran to radioactive slag.

Given those submarines, probably the only nation in the world with the technology to even chance an attack on Israel would be the US. You need to be sure you can track and get those subs while they’re submerged at sea — and all of them, and all simultaneously. We might be able to. I doubt if anyone else can — and I know that Iran won’t be able to for a good thirty years.

So there’s no threat — not unless one assumes that Iran is willing to commit national suicide. And she isn’t, and it’s nonsense to pretend she is.

Israel is in the position of a man with an assault rifle — professing to be mortally afraid of an unfriendly guy down the block who happens to have a kitchen knife. It’s absurd.

Colin, Everyone knows that. However, Israel does not want even the suggestion of military competition in the region so it can continue to steal Palestine. Absent that purpose, which progresses even as I write, it wouldn’t think of attacking Iran. That is why even Yosef may be useful.

Anyway, I think that even your argument excessively rationalizes Israel’s motives. Iran having the atom bomb could only very hypothetically affect matters in Palestine. Iran is simply too far away, and if she’s going to embroil herself in anything, it will be Afghanistan or Shia interests in Iraq and the Gulf. It really won’t affect Israel much one way or the the other if Iran has the bomb. An Iranian bomb is perhaps of vital concern to others; not Israel.

I think Israel is pursuing this simply because there has to be an enemy, and Iran is the best available candidate. As I’ve said: Iran could disappear tomorrow and Israel would simply fasten on someone else.

“Colin, Everyone knows that. .. Sorry, I should better have said ‘everyone who knows, knows’. You cannot know something that is not true. You can, of course, imagine it, believe it, profess to believe, or pretend to believe it, but you cannot know it.

Israel’s principle activity today is the oppression and dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian population. Iran is arguably Israel’s most vociferous opponent in this and in the vanguard of a lot of passive grassroots opposition that threatens to become less passive as the tide advances against the Muslim despots. Israel would like to see that opponent wiped off the map. They can’t do it themselves so they postulate the nuclear weapon threat to the world. I don’t think it is any more complicated than that.

Nick says: ‘Iran is arguably Israel’s most vociferous opponent in this and in the vanguard of a lot of passive grassroots opposition that threatens to become less passive as the tide advances against the Muslim despots. Israel would like to see that opponent wiped off the map. ‘

Not really. Iran certainly likes to say hurtful things about Israel, but it’s (a) a thousand miles away, and (b) Shia. It presumably supports Hezbollah, but Hezbollah itself is a passive player, and only comes into play if Israel resumes its Lebanon games.

At the moment, Israel doesn’t really have any active opponents. Hence the need to pick a fight with somebody.

Colin, it makes no difference how far away an opponent is, the US is further from Iran than Iran from Israel and that doesn’t stop them. Iran is surely vociferous about the oppression of the Palestinians; the last Friday of Ramadan (just passed) was established by Ayatollah Khomeini as a global day for Muslim remembrance of Al-Quds and by extension the predicament of the Palestinians. http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=338281. These events get little or no coverage in the West but they sure do in the Arab media. I agree Iran is not a threat to Israel. The Iranian leadership, and it will apply to whoever replaces Ahmadinejad when his term expires a year from now, regards ‘the Zionist regime’ as destined to destroy itself, a process with sound historical precedent and which many consider to be already under way.

Have you heard of the Samson Program or whatever it is called?
Should Israel come near to being destroyed, those subs will not aim the missiles at Iran, but at european capitals and perhaps Washington and NY, saying after us there are only ashes. This is the biggest blackmail in the history of mankind, the West is forced to prevent any harm to Israel.
For those who understand german: http://www.spiegel-online.de will give you full details, article about 2-3 months old.

I’ll grant Wikipedia isn’t going to be adequate for something like this — but all I can really find is some stray speculation, mostly by independent commentators.

If this was actually an Israeli strategy, it would be valueless unless they more or less clearly indicated that this was their plan. It would be like in ‘Dr Strangelove, where the Russians had a ‘Doomsday Device’ — that they had kept secret. A deterrent that is hidden is no longer a deterrent.

In any case, it’s kind of secondary. Backed into a corner, I’m sure Israel would incinerate somebody. Therefore, the thing to do is to gradually asphyxiate her. South Africa had an atomic bomb as well. It didn’t do her any good.

You’ve barely scratched the surface of the Samson Option, and the wide variety of (apocalyptic) scenarios that might come into play and the wide variety of situations that might trigger those scenarios. Israel is not South Africa and it has taken the “gradual asphyxiation” threat into account in its planning.

This is a serious issue — perhaps one of the most important strategic issues facing the world at large.

The real meaning of the Samson Option: If Israel goes down, it will take the whole “Jew-hating world” down with it, including Europeans and Americans. The problem is, Israel may well succeed in taking itself down by its own self-destructive policies. When it goes down, we may all go down with it, sucked into its lunatic apocalyptic vortex.

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Some have written about the “Samson Option” as a retaliation strategy. In 2002, the Los Angeles Times published an opinion piece by Louisiana State University professor David Perlmutter which has been seen as justifying a Samson Option approach. He wrote:
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Israel has been building nuclear weapons for 30 years. The Jews understand what passive and powerless acceptance of doom has meant for them in the past, and they have ensured against it. Masada was not an example to follow—it hurt the Romans not a whit, but Samson in Gaza? What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens? For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away—unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans—have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?
END QUOTE
END QUOTE

and:

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In 2003, Martin van Creveld thought that the Al-Aqsa Intifada then in progress threatened Israel’s existence. Van Creveld was quoted in David Hirst’s “The Gun and the Olive Branch” (2003) as saying:
BEGIN QUOTE
We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.
END QUOTE
END QUOTE

and:

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Ron Rosenbaum writes in his 2012 book How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III that in the “aftermath of a second Holocaust” Israel’s surviving Dophin-class nuclear missile submarines would retaliate not only against Israel’s attackers, but “bring down the pillars of the world (attack Moscow and European capitals for instance)” as well as the “holy places of Islam.” He writes that “abandonment of proportionality is the essence” of the Samson Option.
END QUOTE

and:

BEGIN QUOTE
In 2012, in response to Gunter Grass’s poem “Was gesagt werden muss” (“What Must Be Said”) which criticized Israel’s nuclear weapons program, Israeli poet and Holocaust survivor Itamar Yaoz-Kest published a poem entitled “The Right to Exist: a Poem-Letter to the German Author” which addresses Grass by name. It contains the line: “If you force us yet again to descend from the face of the Earth to the depths of the Earth – let the Earth roll toward the Nothingness.” This is seen as referring to the Samson Option which is the strategy floated by Ariel Sharon and others of using Israel’s nuclear weapons, possibly damaging the entire world, if Israel faces annihilation.
END QUOTE

The point is that none of those people are spokesmen for the Israeli government — much less official spokesmen. Sure Israel could rain nuclear devastation on all and sundry — and so could France. However, unless either is threatening to do so somehow, it’s not a threat.

It might become a threat, but if this plays out like South Africa, it won’t. As I pointed out, South Africa had the bomb as well. It didn’t do her any good.

Israel has always assumed military supremacy is synonymous with security. The two are closely related — but they’re not synonyms. She can be taken down without those bombs ever becoming a threat. It’s all a matter of making her end with a whimper rather than a bang.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Israel is not South Africa. It’s playing by entirely different rules than South Africa. And it could indeed easily take down most of the planet, and possibly all of it. It is backed into a corner of its own making and the tone of hysteria emanating from some of the highest levels of the Israeli government keeps escalating in shrillness.

It’s possible that the United States and Europe have already been subjected to credible threats by Israel to exercise the Samson Option. In fact, that might explain some of their more inexplicable and unexplainable behavior with regard to Mideast politics. Benjamin Netanyahu acts like he enjoys the upper hand over “the nations” and is free to treat them all — including his patron, the United States — like dirt — or like Ovadia Yosef’s dumb beasts.

Israel may well respond to economic or political pressure from Americans and Europeans that in its warped perception threatens its existence with massive physical overkill — perhaps using false flag methods that can’t be tracked back to itself.

Your swaggering with regard to your (and the West’s) supposed power advantage over Israel is misplaced. Trust me, there are Zionists reading this blog now who are confident that they can knock that arrogance out of you with little effort.

Sean says: ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong. Israel is not South Africa. It’s playing by entirely different rules than South Africa…”

No it’s not — not in any way you mean. The Boers had taken on the British Empire — and fought until their country was a howling wilderness, populated by starving women and children. They were emphatically not dependent on anyone else’s approval and were holed up in a place with ample resources and plenty of trade goods. Compared to Israel, they were set for the long haul. I don’t think the boycott ever inflicted more than moderate economic distress. They weren’t going to get starved out.

…and they had the atom bomb. But they folded in the end. So — much more quickly — would Israel.

Compared to South Africa, Israel is very dependent upon the West in general and America in particular, both economically and psychologically. Let’s get specific about what could happen.

So nations start breaking relations and refusing to trade with them. What are they going to do? Nuke them?

It’s really pretty simple. More and more nations start suspending trade with Israel. They will accept planes with passengers arriving from Israel — but will not permit any planes with passengers to depart for Israel. All this, of course, is only pending her agreeing to quite reasonable terms she will never agree to — like the franchise for Palestinians in the West Bank, a right of return, compensation for loss of property…

There’s no casus belli there. She can refuse the terms…hopefully will for a while. Of course, then the boycott continues. There’s not even any point at which Israel can work herself up to commit national suicide with an attack. There’s just complete…isolation.

And she won’t attack. Most of her citizens and their rulers aren’t actually crazy. They’re going to want to be able to leave themselves…Netanyahu can’t move to New York if he’s nuked it. Heck, by the time they even start talking about it, the exodus will have already begun, and half the potential targets will have Israelis in them.

Theoretically, we could have Israel shut down and emptied out in six months. It won’t be that tidy of course — but it’s fairly easy to manage so that Israel ultimately just goes out with a whimper. The process I’ve outlined will be muddied, and partial, and dragged out over a decade — but it can happen in its essentials. Israel can be quietly and relatively tidily disposed of.

It’ll be a decade of Israel endlessly trying to get the terms that were on offer five years earlier but are no longer available, of more and more countries severing ties, of Israel’s economy steadily doing worse, of more and more Jews leaving the country. The Palestinians will keep getting more restive, and out of fear of provoking further isolation, Israel will be less and less willing to crush them.

Think about the opening stages. So we cut economic assistance and start refusing to sell her arms. So what? Think about the later stages. At what point does she attack? Who does she attack? How does it improve her situation? She drops that first nuke, and she’s gone. She knows it.

This can be done. All that has to happen is that we collectively have to agree that we want to do it. I’d love to pull those nuclear fangs myself — but just for safety’s sake. The measure’s not actually essential. Her bombs won’t save Israel.

sean says: “…perhaps using false flag methods that can’t be tracked back to itself…”

Now there you go. If we don’t even think Israel mounted the attack, why would it cause us to relax our boycott? If we do think she did it, well then, the solution is to tighten the boycott and sever all ties.

Sean, Colin is right but for a different reason; you are both forgetting that these people are cowards and so paranoid about their very existence. That’s all they talk about, so they’d never do it. The Samson Option is just another one from their menu of gimmicks to keep you on edge.

Sean doesn’t get the economics.
3/4 + of Israel’s IT industry is owned by US companies.
After weapons export and IT, generic drugs which have to be approved by the importing country are their next largest export.
70% of ALL investment monies into Israel comes from outside foreign sources.
60% of all their trade is with Europe and the US.
The US guarentees Israeli debt on their government purchases from other countries.

What is it going to take to break down the misguided complacence and arrogance of you and Colin and to open up your minds to an understanding of the Samson Option?

Colin reports that he read the Wikipedia entry on the Samson Option, but I don’t think he understood what he read.

Yes, it would be easy for the world, or the West or even the United States by itself to bring down Israel through economic and political pressure alone, without the use of military or physical force. But that violence-free policy might trigger Israel’s violent use of the Samson Option.

Israel has repeatedly communicated the message that it can hurt the world as badly as the world can hurt it — and the message is credible. If Israel goes down, it will take the entire world down with it.

Scenario: what if briefcase nukes were detonated in Manhattan, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Rome and the Vatican on the same day? What if evidence was carefully prepared and artfully arranged to point responsibility for the attacks towards Muslim terrorists backed by a state actor like Iran?

Scenario: what if Israel were to unleash a biological weapon on the world that would eliminate most of the human race? Such weapons may well exist.

Israel under a state of maximum threat to its survival might pull the trigger on the Samson Option without publicly “taking credit” for doing so.

Walid claims that the Israelis are too “cowardly” to follow through on the Samson Option. I doubt that most Israelis or Jews worldwide would support the use of the Samson Option, but all it would require is a small group of zealots at the top of the Israeli government, in control of a large arsenal of WMDs, to do the deed.

When people make threats with the power to execute those threats, it is usually a good idea to pay close attention.

You and Colin are under the mistaken impression that Israel lacks the power and will to rock your world.

I have read all above comments and all those if and if and if……
Sounds like: “the iraquis will greet us as liberators”, and we all know how that worked out!!

Should Israel be overrun by armies of enemies, or destroyed by thousands of rockers raining down on them, perhaps chemical and/or biological, I doubt all those great fabrics and businesses mentioned would be any interest to the leader of the israelis.
Most will be in ruins anyway and their days are counted, so all it takes a few idiotic fanatics, like Rabby Yosef and Niniyahoo, (remember the Masada), to push the buttons and ring in a destruction the world never knew before.

Colin, I just do not understand your reasoning:
1. South Africa never had to fear a foreign invasion, as Israel must, so whom would they A-bomb? Their problems were internal, do you think they should have bombed the black townships? All participants were born in the country, were citizens and all they had to do is to arrange the power structure among them. They did just that.
On the other hand Israel invaded palestinian lands, they are not native, are constantly invading and attacking neighboring countries, and their problems are both domestic and international. I personally do not see an ounce of similarity between them.
2. Your suggestion of a blockade sounds funny. We had 67 years to do just that and never dared even to mention such an act. Who will blockade them? Our presidents, government, congress, banking system, MSM, TV and Film Industries, think tanks, universities, etc., etc. are all in jewish hands, controlled by the zionists through AIPAC, ADL and hundreds of such organisations, jewish youths join the IDF, but not our military, so
WHAT DO YOU THINK; WHO WILL DECIDE AND GIVE ORDER FOR THAT BLOCKADE??!!

We should also do not forget the revolt of jews in the Warshaw Ghetto, fighting bravely the SS with inferior weapons. Any animal, when cornered, will fight for his life. So do humans.
The only solution is to clear house at home, get those double citizens out of our government and military, cut contributions to a party to a $1,ooo maximum per person, no contributions are allowed by businesses and foreign interests, investigate, and jail if quilty, members of AIPAC, ADL etc.
In other words, the 98% of citizens should take our country back and with that we just solved the israeli problems.

I must remind the jewish participants of what M. Ghandi said:
“When you want to cross a river you must leave one of the banks”.
Join the 98% to make the USA what it once was, never perfect, but certainly better than it is now.

You wrote: “So nations start breaking relations and refusing to trade with them. What are they going to do? Nuke them?”

Precisely. Or worse (consider the option of using biological weapons). If you can’t get into the head of the Old Testament God, you won’t get what the Samson Option is all about. The psychology is too abnormal for you to grasp. You are operating under the false assumption that Israel is a rational actor.

Any political movement that is immersed in the messianic concepts of Eretz Yisrael, Moshiach, Amalek, Judea and Samaria, the nations, Haman, Armageddon, etc. is quite capable of unleashing the Samson Option on the world.

Inside the mind of Samson Option advocates: this is a direct quote from a pro-Israel militant that appeared on Digg a few years ago:

“Thank G-d there are enough brave, righteous souls on digg to combat the freak party you scum have been throwing around here with your blatant lies and propaganda against Israel. I can’t deny that I will be pleased when I see your kind of evil grovel in agony when you finally realize the horror you will suffer at the coming of the Moshiach.”

The author is a leading member of the Kahanist JIDF, a group which enjoys more than 56,000 followers on Twitter. (By comparison, Mondoweiss has just over 11,000 followers on Twitter.)

When you think Samson Option, think of Moshiach (the Jewish Messiah) venting his rage and taking his vengeance on “the nations” as the grand climax of thousands of years of perpetual conflict revolving around “Israel” — the Chosen People. That is what it is all about.

The Samson Option is the only threat the whole world faces, not Iraq, not Afghanistan, not Libya, not Iran or Syria, or any other nation, but Israel, the gangster bully boys.
During an interview with Alan Hart, the then Israeli premier Golda Meir twice stated that Israel was prepared to destroy the whole world with nuclear weapons if Israel ever faced military defeat. She and others have used this obscene blackmail, justifying it with the thought that we were all only ever created just to serve them, and that if we ever fail in this duty, then we are all to be quite justifiably punished by extermination. This is your security issue above all others. http://vaticproject.blogspot.com/2010/04/nuclear-threat-from-israeli-submarines.htmlhttp://www.propublica.org/article/drive-by-scanning-officials-expand-use-and-dose-of-radiation-for-security-s

BEGIN QUOTE
Yeah I think they’ll be a few survivors cuz I don’t believe the israelis will get the chance to unload ALL their nukes all at the same time.

Also I don’t believe they can reach areas in the world like New Zealand and South America.

Perhaps you’ve seen too many Hollywood disaster movies.
END QUOTE

You’re overlooking a few key points here:

1. Many nukes these days are portable — briefcase size or smaller. They can be planted anywhere in the world (including in New Zealand and South America, as well as in the United States and Europe) and be detonated simultaneously if one so desires.

2. Israel probably possesses enough nuclear weapons to cause a nuclear winter, which would devastate the entire planet. David Perlmutter wrote in the Los Angeles Times (see the Wikipedia entry on the Samson Option): “What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a NUCLEAR WINTER.” [my emphasis].

3. Biological weapons are also in play (especially the contagious ones) — some of them could quickly rip through the entire human race if artfully disseminated at key points around the globe.

4. There are better sources for understanding these issues than Hollywood disaster movies. These technologies are for real. Serious people are giving serious thought to them.

5. When people make threats associated with these technologies and scenarios, it’s best to listen up and focus. Ignore the warning signs at your own risk. The threats may be credible — especially when coming from a nation like Israel.

ColinWright and American imagine that they have Israel by the balls — they couldn’t be more mistaken.

The israelis are fumblers and bumblers – I don’t believe they’re capable of pulling something so grand, so huge, like you describe, all by themselves and hitting a bulls-eye one after the other till the world is utterly and completely destroyed.

I take their psychosis seriously but I just don’t reckon their aim is steady enough.

Yes, I am also doubtful that the exercise of the Samson Option as envisioned by some Zionists would succeed in wreaking as much havoc as they imagine — but it might wreak a good deal of havoc. Certainly enough to get the world’s attention.

When you see threats like this, made by representatives of a messianic political movement that does indeed possess a large arsenal of state-of-the-art WMDs of every conceivable variety, I think one should ponder, what’s up? Where is this going?

Could we see a situation develop on a scale much greater than 9/11 or Nagasaki and Hiroshima or the Dresden Bombing? I think yes. I think that something like that is probably in the works. It’s like a Chekhov play, with a gun introduced early in the story. We’ve got a well-established biblical narrative, believed by many, to produce this apocalyptic outcome.

“What is it going to take to break down the misguided complacence and arrogance of you and Colin and to open up your minds to an understanding of the Samson Option?”…sean

Nothing complacent about it. I go by facts and experts on the subject. Listen you can hyperventilate over their monkey’s screeching all you want, Israel could do some damage, but bring down the world? No way.
Look, instead of this berserkness you worked yourself into…go visit the US War College Strategic Command section and the FAS and read up and keep up with what capabilities Israel actually has and doesn’t have. Yes, they have about 80 nukes and could kill a lot of Arabs in the ME…and themselves at the same time. Pakistan has nukes, Turkey has US nukes, the US has 10,000 nukes and Russia has more than we do, 16,000 nukes…and we and they can actually deliver them anywhere in the world. Israel doesn’t have, as of 2010, the delivery to reach beyond the outer limits of Europe much less the US or Russia. And their Dolphin subs aren’t undetectable either. LOL…. do you seriously think the US’s nuclear subs are all sitting at home in dry dock or out there looking around the seas for ‘alien’ subs all the time just like Russia’s are?
I really suggest you do some serious researching at the sites I mentioned before you go gagaga over this. Israel can’t rock the world, maybe shock the world and do some serious terrorism and some damage in the ME , but not rock the world.

P.S.
“Wiki” is not a source you should use for anything UNLESS you also go the foot note citation and then go the original source and then see who wrote it and then see what their background and bona fides are. AND particularly on anything to do with Israel.Wiki is so screwed with hasbara on Israel it’s a joke.

Listen, there is one thing the US won’t do for Israel —-and that is as the super cop of the universe, they won’t ‘take the fall’ for or allow Israel to nuke the ME into oblivion and plunge the world into ”economic darkness” …..that would be when the US takes Israel out, Jews or no Jews….that’s the red line.

“You and Colin are under the mistaken impression that Israel lacks the power and will to rock your world”..sean

BTW…I don’t doubt there are zios who have the will to destroy everyone except or even themselves.
BUT….they ”can’t bring down the world”..they could kill a lot of Arabs and cause economic chaos for a lot of the world by nuking the ME but that’s it.

SeanMcBride says: ‘Israel under a state of maximum threat to its survival might pull the trigger on the Samson Option without publicly “taking credit” for doing so.’

But what good would this do Israel? If she even makes the threat, she’s just finished herself off. Half her trade would stop virtually of itself. If she does it covertly, she’s just halved her trade anyway — in a world that is substantially reduced in numbers and consequently in chaos. No one is going to support her in the style to which she is accustomed out of fear that she will beat them up if they don’t.

Really, people — and states are just aggregations of people — don’t function this way. Theoretically, your neighbor could come over and kill you at any moment. However, he’s not going to. I promise.

Sure, Israel could physically do all kinds of things — although as a practical matter, I don’t think she could strike much more than about a thousand miles from her shores. We’re able to track all submarines anywhere in the world, and I’m sure we know exactly where Israel’s are, and if they start heading into the mid-Atlantic, we’re going to quietly sink them.

More to the point, though, you have to outline the precise psychological path that leads to Israel deciding to wipe out half mankind. Barring our being incredibly obtuse, there isn’t one. She might try concocting another Burgas bombing and then eventually nuke Tehran or something — but even that is just too obviously suicidal even for Israel.

Why didn’t South Africa use her bomb — or at least threaten too? Life isn’t all just about what you could do. It’s about what you are actually going to do — and Israel just isn’t going to do what you suggest. For one, she’d have to admit to herself what she is to do it — and she’s never going to do that.

Now, we could probably contrive matters so that we back Israel into a corner, and then she’s probably nuts enough to pull the trigger. But as I’ve outlined, there’s no need to do that. We can take her down, quite certain that the moment when she will feel it in her interest to lash out will never come. She can be wrapped up, bundled up, and forced to capitulate just as South Africa was. In fact, considerably more easily than South Africa was.

We have met the enemy, and he is us. All we have to do to put Israel down is to decide we want to do it.

SeanMcBride says: ‘Israel under a state of maximum threat to its survival…”

I think this is the point. There won’t ever be a point of ‘maximum threat to its survival.’

Things will just get slowly worse for Israel without her ever realizing it. More and more countries will impose more and more strictures on trade with her, and we’ll both support her less vigorously and have less and less say in world affairs ourselves, and more and more Jews will get those second passports and use them, and the Palestinians will get more and more difficult and Israel will be more and more inhibited about crushing them.

When does a marriage become bad? At what point did divorce become inevitable? Things — in so many ways — have gotten so much worse for Israel over the last thirty years. Without even realizing it, she has gone from an accepted member of the international community to someone who is only invited to the party on account of us.

So is it bad enough to pull the trigger now? And if not now when? When she’s getting no aid from the US, half the Jews in the country are Haredim, and she’s already given all her Palestinian subjects the vote and they’re using it?

Theo says: “…Colin, I just do not understand your reasoning:
1. South Africa never had to fear a foreign invasion, as Israel must, so whom would they A-bomb?’

And whom would Israel A-bomb?

The point is that South Africa’s atomic bomb was useless not merely against the townships — but also against the process of moral and economic isolation that forced her to throw in the towel.

Israel would be even more vulnerable to the same forms of pressure — and her arsenal would prove equally useless against them. You can’t beat people up until they love you.

I have watched with considerable pleasure Israel’s endless pursuit of ever-greater military supremacy. She completely fails to realize that while military power is a fine tool, it is not sufficient unto itself. She cannot force the rest of the planet to cooperate in her survival.

“You wrote: “So nations start breaking relations and refusing to trade with them. What are they going to do? Nuke them?”

Precisely. Or worse (consider the option of using biological weapons). If you can’t get into the head of the Old Testament God, you won’t get what the Samson Option is all about. The psychology is too abnormal for you to grasp. You are operating under the false assumption that Israel is a rational actor.”

Name one state in all the history of mankind that has acted as you postulate Israel would.

They all throw in the towel sooner or later. At the end, when Hitler started issuing demented ‘blow up everything’ orders, his minions just started quietly ignoring him. Even Japan — the arch-apostle of suicidal resistance — finally realized there was just no point.

And I submit that Israel is not crazier than either Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan.

More to the point, just when is the time to make this great death threat going to come? As I’ve already pointed out, we’re already part-way to the end. Why doesn’t she start issuing her ultimata now? When — exactly — will she? Will she nuke Hamburg when Germany won’t sell her another nuclear sub in 2016 or whenever? Italy when Italy suspends commercial ties in 2018? Ourselves when President Rand Paul halts all foreign aid in 2020? Is she going to try to prevent Jews themselves from leaving in 2021 when the exodus is reaching 100,000 a year?

What’s going to be that magic moment?

In a way, it’s like global warming. For all the gloom ‘n doom prophesying, the worst thing about global warming is that it’s never going to perceptibly ‘hit.’

“You should never underestimate your enemies, because that is the first step you took toward loosing a war.”
I learned that over 50 years ago when I was in the military business.
It is just as true today. We underestimated the vietnamis, the iraqies, the afghans and lost all those wars.

1. The Samson Option is a very large scale jewish suicidal pact, in case Israel is on the verge of being overrun by enemy forces, like a combined army of the moslems, or being destroyed by thousands of rockets and have no hopes left. They want to punish all those anti-semites who did not help them and allowed their destruction and want to go down in flames taking all they can with them.
This option is not planned for an economical downfall or civil war between fractions of israelis, a very likely scenario, but solely for military destruction.

2. South Africa had no enemies outside the country, as Israel have many, did not have to recon with an invasion or attack by thousands of missiles.
Their problems were solely internal.
Regardless how hard you try, it will not match, you are comparing apples to oranges.

Israel could not destroy the whole world, but certainly could do real damage and kill millions of innocent people.
Do we always know where all submarines of this world are located? Can they sneak up on us? I could name you a few very hairy situations, so please do not be so complacent, we are good, but not perfect.

You are making several false assumptions about the world when discussing the Samson Option:

1. Sometimes you sound like you are living in the 1950s. In the year 2012 WMDs are not limited to nuclear weapons delivered by missiles. Nuclear weapons can be delivered anywhere in the world using conventional transportation — trucks, airplanes, trains, etc. And the subject of biological weapons (including engineered global pandemics) doesn’t even occur to your mind.

2. You assume that the Samson Option is too crazy a scenario to contemplate, but the truth is that human history is largely the chronicle of the disastrously deranged behavior of powerful irrational actors.

3. You assume that the United States and Europe can easily bash around Israel if they so choose but that Israel can’t massively retaliate in response to that treatment. You are wrong.

4. One could easily crash the global economy — and world civilization with it — with just a few nuclear weapons directed at the right targets. Certainly one could easily take down the United States or Europe with a few nuclear weapons directed at the right targets.

You’re attached to a model of the world in your head in which you can easily swat Israel like an annoying gnat. That model in no way corresponds to contemporary reality.

You also failed to discuss the possible use of cyber weapons against highly strategic targets — including against military command and control systems and the core computational machinery of the world’s leading financial centers. Israel is on the cutting edge of developing that kind of technology.

The mere threat to use the Samson Option (at whatever level of destruction) has already proven to be an effective method for Israel to influence or control the behavior of the American government. Israel’s threats to attack Iran before the upcoming presidential election have that flavor about them — do what we command or we will make your life a living hell.

Well, you’re free to believe whatever you chose. I don’t disagree that there may be a zio group in Israel crazy enough try to some chemical warfare or other terrorism, but I do disagree Israel has the capability to take the world down or cause a ‘nuclear winter’ world wide.
They could cause a ‘economic winter’ for large parts of the world if they nuked the ME.
BUT, thats the only way they could really ‘get at the rest of the world’.

Pay attention to what’s really going on with those far smarter than you and I…..US Military command is currently calling Israel’s bluff and advising Obama to do so. So despite all the hysterics and public political pandering the US has adopted the attitude of living with Israel’s bluffs and screeching and crying wolf…at least so far.

Read between the lines of what Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey has said recently..actually you don’t even have to read between some of the lines of diplo speak, some are pretty clear:

“They are living with an existential concern that we are not living with.”

“You can take two countries and interpret the same intelligence and come out with two different conclusions. I’d suggest to you that’s what’s really happening here,”

“And I’ll tell you we have to clearly define our national interest. What you do in one place, whether it’s Syria or the Strait of Hormuz, there are trade offs.”

The US congress and politics may be eaten up with the Israel fetish but I guarantee you within the US Stragetic command we have the same ‘what if’ military scenarios on how to deal with or contain any Israeli premptive nuke launch as we have for other nuclear countries.

1. The Samson Option is a very large scale jewish suicidal pact, in case Israel is on the verge of being overrun by enemy forces, like a combined army of the moslems, or being destroyed by thousands of rockets and have no hopes left. They want to punish all those anti-semites who did not help them and allowed their destruction and want to go down in flames taking all they can with them.
This option is not planned for an economical downfall or civil war between fractions of israelis, a very likely scenario, but solely for military destruction.

2. South Africa had no enemies outside the country, as Israel have many, did not have to recon with an invasion or attack by thousands of missiles.
Their problems were solely internal.
Regardless how hard you try, it will not match, you are comparing apples to oranges…”

Leaving aside the detail that I have yet to read any evidence that this ‘Samson option’ is something anyone who is actually in a position of power in Israel is considering, as your (1) makes clear, it refers to threats that in my view are highly unlikely to materialize. I don’t anticipate Israel being overrun by anyone, nor will missiles be rained on her by anyone she isn’t bombing at the time.

I don’t see Israel going out that way. I see her going out simply by continuing on the track she’s on — and at what point on that track does she fire off the missiles?

If we are comparing apples and oranges, it’s only because you brought up oranges. The ‘samson option’ you describe has nothing to do with any scenario I envision.

sean mcbride says: “…4. One could easily crash the global economy — and world civilization with it — with just a few nuclear weapons directed at the right targets. Certainly one could easily take down the United States or Europe with a few nuclear weapons directed at the right targets…”

Your hypotheses keep reminding me of a neophyte camper who is scared a rattlesnake is going to crawl into his sleeping bag and bite him.

Well, it could — but why would a rattlesnake do that? What would it gain? It can’t eat the person.

Similarly, why would Israel wreck the world’s economy? It’s more than usually dependent upon that same world economy. It would be signing its own death warrant — even leaving aside the possibility that some aggrieved survivor might retaliate.

Ditto for threatening the same. People are going to keep doing business with someone who’s leveling threats at them? I had two prospective customers like that; I most assuredly didn’t hasten to placate them by doing what they wanted. I promptly cut all contact — as would any country that Israel openly threatened.

This ‘Samson option’ is something that no one in Israel’s government has even discussed. I might as well theorize that NickJOCW is plotting to kill me. He hasn’t said that he’s going to, but he probably could — so it follows that I should worry about it?

And as I’ve already said, where’s the precedent? Where is another nation that has ever done something similar? Nations don’t practice suicide bombing — by the time it gets to that point, everyone has forgotten about the nation and is just trying to get out.

Aside from the other problems, your ‘Samson option’ theory assumes an Israel that is still functional but that has lost all hope. Israel will always be playing to live until there is no more Israel. People (and nations) are like that. Hitler was mounting attacks with mythical armies and figuring that Roosevelt’s death meant he had a chance.

There’s never going to be a core of despairing (and suicidally inclined) survivors, still with their fingers on the trigger. As long as they’re still in power, they will be trying to figure out how they can wiggle out of it, and when they really give up, they’ll no longer be in a position to do anything, even if they wanted to.

Theo says: “Do we always know where all submarines of this world are located? Can they sneak up on us? I could name you a few very hairy situations, so please do not be so complacent, we are good, but not perfect.”

Obviously, this isn’t the sort of thing the US Navy posts on its website, but my understanding is that by some point late in the Cold War, we had a network of sonobuoys or something that allowed us to track all Soviet subs anywhere on the high seas anywhere in the world.

I would assume that its still in place, and I would assume that we can (and probably do) carefully track all of Israel’s missile subs when they are at sea.

We could probably take out her whole fleet whenever we wanted to — and quite deniably.

We agree to not agree!! We had a nice exchange of opinions, and that is what they are, opinions.
I certainly hope you are right and we never have to face any idiotic acts by the israelis, but nothing is guaranteed. Just take a look at Norway, could you ever imagine a human being could kill 77 persons in a few hours? One after the other? I hope Israel never lets any settler near to the control buttons of those missiles or a crazy rabbi longing for those days 3,000 years ago.

One question: why do you think Israel borrowed, (not paid yet), those subs from Germany and is in the process of arming them with nuclear missiles?
They cannot use such weapons in the ME, the fallout would poison Israel just as much as it does the target or targets and such attack is an invitation for chemical response. What did they have in mind with those subs?

By the way, just a suitcase a-bomb on Wall St. and in the City in London would cause a total collaps of finances in the whole world, so those subs must have a more important designation.

Do you think that Israel possesses the means and the temperament to threaten the US and Europe with WMDs if it believed that American and European diplomatic and political policies were leading to Israel’s destruction?

How much damage do you think that Israel would be capable of inflicting on the US and Europe with WMDs? Minor? Major? Catastrophic?

This question is especially relevant at the moment because some powerful Israelis believe that the failure of the US and Europe to act militarily against Iran is creating an “existential” threat to Israel.

An ancillary question: which group do you think that Israel is really more paranoid about: Muslims and Arabs or European and American whites and Christians — especially when taking into account that the Holocaust occurred quite recently in the heart of Christian Europe? Which group does Israel feel it is more important to control?

Colin and American think that Israeli leaders think the way they do — they can’t think outside the box of their own assumptions about how the world works. Which means that they are not likely to be able to anticipate and predict Israeli behavior. Many Americans and Europeans made similar mispredictions about the behavior of the Nazi leadership in the early 1930s. (I just read Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts” on this subject — I highly recommend it.)

Non-messianic and commonsensical people are never able to comprehend messianic and mystical people — the emotional and mental operations of messianic true believers are completely opaque and unreal to them.

I am sure that the highest levels of the military establishments in the US and Europe are thinking carefully about the issues you raised. A few portable nukes could easily bring down the Western and global financial system. A few dozen portable nukes (and those items do indeed exist) detonated at strategic locations could take down human civilization.

When people with the means and mentality to make real these kinds of apocalyptic scenarios issue hysterical threats, they should be taken seriously.

Samson believed that he would liberate the Israelites by destroying the Palestinians and himself. That wouldn’t be what happened in a Samson Option. Israel does not have the ability to destroy all humanity and those who were left would curse the Israelites down all the generations. The Mosaic religion would cease, for shame, to be practised. The Samson threats seem to me to be mere bluster.

You are making the assumption that the people who are making these threats are rational actors — a shaky and dangerous assumption. Messianic ethno-religious nationalists carrying grudges that have accumulated and festered over several thousand years, and who have been indoctrinated in an ideology that is fundamentally apocalyptic, tend to be highly irrational actors.

Colin and American think that Israeli leaders think the way they do — they can’t think outside the box of their own assumptions about how the world works. Which means that they are not likely to be able to anticipate and predict Israeli behavior. Many Americans and Europeans made similar mispredictions about the behavior of the Nazi leadership in the early 1930s”
>>>>>>>>>

Sean, it’s not a matter of not thinking out of the box or not being able to imagine how someone else thinks. Most thinking people don’t ‘assume’ anything.

And this debate isn’t about whether or not some zios might try to carry out the Sampson apocalyptic scenario….. some might be that crazy.
The argument we are making is Israel could holocaust, for lack of a better word, the ME, but it doesn’t have the ability to ‘bring down the entire world’. Not even with 6 nuclear subs. They could hurt the rest of the world by doing that, but not destroy the rest of the world. The world would work thur the economic damage that would cause and go on.

The possibility of Israel using suitcase nukes and nuclear subs to strike at the US or other countries as a false flag operation to a spark nuclear showdown is possible. And possible in the case of sub fired nuclear missile, it wouldn’t be intercepted if fired from short enough distance but 99.% impossible that the source wouldn’t be identified. To provoke the world into a complete nuclear showdown to destroy itself they would have to set up some plan whereby the US and Russia and several other nuclear countries all ‘willy nilly’ nuked each other and other countries. To say that this would happen then you and the zios would have to “assume” that all others leaders of other countries are as insane as the zios who might do it.

seanmcbride: ‘…When people with the means and mentality to make real these kinds of apocalyptic scenarios issue hysterical threats, they should be taken seriously’

You are determined to see this ‘threat’ as genuine — and you just won’t let any consideration get in the way. None. Take the above.

You say ‘people with the means and the mentality issue hysterical threats.’ It just doesn’t slow you down at all that none of the people proffering the ‘samson option’ have any connection with the Israeli government, does it?

I sometimes talk whimsically about ‘the enemy to the north.’ Well, I find it amusing. However, more to the point and believe it or not, it really doesn’t mean the US army is planning to invade Canada. These guys you quote are all entirely independent of the Israeli government: ‘Louisiana State University professor David Perlmutter’ and so on. Look at the list. None of them have even the most indirect connection with the Israeli power structure.

If I announce that you could go on a homicidal rampage, how does that make it likely that you will?

Sure, Israel could do this — or something close enough. However, the pertinent question is will she — and every aspect of the situation tells me it’s highly unlikely she will. It would be historically unprecedented, it wouldn’t do Israel any good, and in fact, just hinting at it would probably seal her fate. So I can’t see it.

Theo says: “We underestimated the vietnamis, the iraqies, the afghans and lost all those wars.”

I’d say we underestimated the Vietnamese. We went into Iraq and Afghanistan with a mission statement that would have pretty much guaranteed failure against anybody.

Briefly, that mission statement was ‘let’s make them take up a mode of life that is at odds with just about everything they’ve ever practiced. Since it would be wrong to actually force them to to this, we’ll give lots of money to anyone who pretends to go along and shoot anyone who tries to fight them.’

Hey! It didn’t work! Well, whaddaya know… Picture Saudi Arabia trying to get the inhabitants of Cambridge, Ma to practice Wahhabi Islam and you’ll get some idea of the absurdity of our goals.

I am imagining the possibilities you suggested. Smuggling suitcase nukes into a country or Israel firing a nuke on some country from a sub.
Both damaging and the sub nuke more so, but not catastrophic to the world..as in ending the civilized world or large parts of it for decades or forever.

“It just doesn’t slow you down at all that none of the people proffering the ‘samson option’ have any connection with the Israeli government, does it?”…..Colin

Not totally accurate. The Israel government, by directions of it’s Prime Ministers, has twice in the past threaten to use nukes’ and were officially confirmed as being on the ‘verge’ of using them. If it was a game of chicken it was a very dangerous one. So I do agree with Sean about the
Samson type mentality and hysterical nature of various zionist leaders.
Some write this off as blackmailing the US, which it is of course, but also I am sure within the Strategic Command in the US no one discounts the possibility that Israel might use them in some battle or event they were losing. I am also pretty sure a lot of Israel experts in our gov see Israel as a less rational actor than Iran by virture of it’s past history.

“During the 1973 Yom Kippur holiday was so desperate that Prime Minister Golda Meir — as intelligence service reports have now revealed — ordered her Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to prepare several nuclear bombs for combat and deliver them to air force units. Then, just before the warheads were to be armed, the tide turned. Israel’s forces gained the upper hand on the battlefield, and the bombs made their way back to their underground bunkers.

Again in the first hours of the 1991 Gulf War, an American satellite registered that Israel had responded to the bombardment by Iraqi Scud missiles by mobilizing its nuclear force. Israeli analysts had mistakenly assumed that the Scuds would be armed with poison gas. It remains unclear how Israel would have acted if a Scud missile tipped with nerve gas had hit a residential area.”

As I review Colin’s recent comments on the subject I get the impression that he doesn’t realize that this has been a major topic in high-level strategic thinking and discussion about Mideast and Israeli politics for quite some time (at least four decades).

I urge Colin to search on “Samson Option” in Google Books and Google Scholar (*not* just Google) to get up to speed. The subject is coming back to life once again in a big way because of all the hysterical tension that Israel is manufacturing and ratcheting up over Iran.

How catastrophic would it be for the United States if four or five suitcase nukes were detonated at highly strategic locations (use your imagination) in its leading cities simultaneously? This isn’t disaster movie nonsense: this stuff is doable. We need to be thinking about these scenarios in an urgent way.

I am not referring only to the Samson Option — any number of players could hatch such a plot for a variety of motives. But some Israelis and pro-Israel activists have made the terrible political mistake (in my opinion) of putting the Samson Option in play in public discussion about Israeli politics. Seymour Hersh wrote an entire book on the subject.

Van Creveld is well plugged in to high-level strategic thinking in Israeli circles.

Basic biographical details:

BEGIN QUOTE
Martin Levi van Creveld (born 5 March 1946) is an Israeli military historian and theorist.

Van Creveld was born in the Netherlands in the city of Rotterdam, and has lived in Israel since shortly after his birth. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has been on the faculty since 1971. He is the author of seventeen books on military history and strategy, of which Command in War (1985), Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (1977, 2nd edition 2004), The Transformation of War (1991), The Sword and the Olive (1998) and The Rise and Decline of the State (1999) are among the best known. Van Creveld has lectured or taught at many strategic institutes in the Western world, including the U.S. Naval War College.
END QUOTE

And to refresh your memory on what van Creveld had to say about the Samson Option:

BEGIN QUOTE
In 2003, Martin van Creveld thought that the Al-Aqsa Intifada then in progress threatened Israel’s existence. Van Creveld was quoted in David Hirst’s “The Gun and the Olive Branch” (2003) as saying:
BEGIN QUOTE
We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.
END QUOTE
END QUOTE

Now, it’s fine if these kinds of remarks don’t capture your attention — but they capture my attention. This meme keeps simmering at the highest levels of the Israeli government and at times approaches a full rolling boil. Watch out.

seanmcbride says: “Van Creveld is well plugged in to high-level strategic thinking in Israeli circles…”

And you then proceed to quote a mass of material that doesn’t support that contention at all.

Van Creveld is a writer who is given to advancing many bold and controversial theories — like the one you’re fascinated by at the moment. That he advances such a theory in no way implies that the same theory is Israeli government policy.

“…This meme keeps simmering at the highest levels of the Israeli government and at times approaches a full rolling boil. ..”

Never mind that you have yet to cite any evidence at all that ‘this meme is simmering’ at any levels in the Israeli government at all.

There is (a) no evidence that anyone in actual charge of policy has any such ideas at all, (b) no discernible mechanism by which such behavior could do Israel any good, and (c) no example of a nation having behaved this way in human history.

You might as well decide that France is going to nuke us so as to regain Algeria. Never mind that there’s no evidence she’s going to, no way this would work out well for France, and no reason to see it all ending up with her having regained Algeria.

seanmcbride: “How catastrophic would it be for the United States if four or five suitcase nukes were detonated at highly strategic locations (use your imagination) in its leading cities simultaneously? “

The rattlesnake in the sleeping bag again. Explain how doing this benefits Israel.

How catastrophic would it be for the United States if four or five suitcase nukes were detonated at highly strategic locations (use your imagination) in its leading cities simultaneously? >>>>>>>

First of all, to me catastrophic means so devastating there is little to no chance of a come back. Maybe you use it as something a bit less that.

But depending on where they put them it could kill scores of people and be crippling to many basic functions. Let’s say they successfully did it to WS, the Pentagon, DC, NYC, other high population centers, power and water plants, ports, airports, communications, etc.. Let’s even say they were able to wipe out all government functions and kill all public officials before any could hide in that US command center bunker in the mountain, and wipe out all military bases and personel and bring everything in the US a stand still.
Bad, very bad, but the US is a big, big place, people might think the US revolves around NY and DC or WStreet financial centers or LA and other metropolitan areas or institutions but it isn’t so. And the bulk of US populations doesn’t live within metro areas. The people outside of the affected areas out in fly over land would cope and go on, reorganize and eventually rebuild.
They would have to smuggle in a hell of a lot of nukes to do that though.
Another best nightmare if you want one, is if they were able to blow up all the nuclear power plants in the US at once and leave us in a radiation cloud fallout.
But all the stuff you can think up has been thought of already. Doesn’t mean they are necessarily competent in ways they think up to prevent it as 911 showed us. But I still maintain that the 911 100% incompetence was a fluke that had some help from somewhere.
The only way I know of , ever read or heard any experts on, that the US could be totally destroyed by one actor is a nuclear war between the US and Russia. That scenario has been gamed by the FAS atomic scientist. Russia, all thing being equal, such as we can’t intercept any more of their nukes than they can intercept of ours , comes out the winner in who could recover simply because of their massive land mass, 5 to 6 times larger than the US.
Among the people who play with these what ifs I have seen some scientist speculate on some kind of new type Russian hydrogen bomb that sucks all the oxygen out of air killing every living thing but allows for vegetation to regrow without the mutating radiation effects as the atmosphere re oxygenates. But that may be just rumor, speculation and hype though.
To absolutely totally wipe out the US, every person in it, so it couldn’t come back as a organized country you would have create a condition of no water and no vegetation to sustain life and no way for anyone who might come to our aid to get those necessities to us.

You keep changing the subject, we called that disinformation in the old days.
Good 5o years ago I worked with our military intelligence, a few jobs with NSA, and during 1967 I was at our european headquarters.
Why do you think we did not go and defend or revenge the attack on the SS Liberty? We knew that Israel armed several planes with nuclear bombs and our military commanders were sh.t scared of what they may do. I am sure the washingtonians also had to change their underwear.
That is the reason why we did nothing, we were afraid of any escalation that may give the zionists a reason to send those planes on their way.
Yes, we could have destroyed them on the ground or in the air, possibly causing a major nuclear catastrophe making the whole ME a dead zone for thousands of years. Dayan knew it and judged our response correctly, playing with fire did work for him, his mad dog theory. They may just do it again if the push turns to shove.

You seem like a bright guy — it surprises me that your discussion about the Samson Option is so uninformed and weak. In fact, you have made it clear that you don’t even grasp the basic concept behind the Samson Option — otherwise you wouldn’t keep asking what Israel would hope to gain from the policy. Obviously the answer to that is NOTHING but the satisfaction of paying back the human race for several thousand years of persecution and bad treatment.

Do this: achieve a state of No Mind, meditate ambiently on the following cloud, open your third eye, and see what visions and prophecies you can channel and view in your crystal ball. Be patient. Don’t rush it:

Comparing France and other well-established nations to Israel in this context? Absurd. Think about it. It’s like comparing bicycles to roast beef sandwiches — there is nothing significant to compare. Israel is an outlier and an anomaly across every conceivable dimension — not at all a normal nation in a normal situation. It is carrying colossal baggage.

American’s recent brainstorming on the issue was interesting — he is on the right track — especially when mentioning the possibility of attacking nuclear power plants with portable nuclear devices. Some of the most alarming scenarios one doesn’t even want to mention for fear of planting dangerous ideas in the wrong minds — in deviousness and impact they go well beyond submarine scripts.

The servile posture of American leadership reinforces the attitudes of people like Rabbi Yosef. “We must be a superior people to have the most powerful nation in the history of the world serving us on bended knee!”

“The servile posture of American leadership reinforces the attitudes of people like Rabbi Yosef. “We must be a superior people to have the most powerful nation in the history of the world serving us on bended knee!””

The question arises: why is the United States “on bended knee” with regard to Israel? What might be going on behind the scenes that we don’t see?

Well it’s not behind the scenes but is little talked about and that’s the great sucking sound of tons of money, not previous US aid wasted, but Union and public employees pension money invested in Israel bonds and into all kinds of Israeli ventures thru many IRA and 401 stock funds of investment houses , Israel’s foreign purchases debt the US is on the hook for by guaranteeing it, and the kind of infrastructure investment lose US firms like Intel and Micro and others take as a result of Israel exploding. I posted a run down on this here a long time ago. I imagine Israel is even further into individual American’s pockets by now…it’s very extensive. I just noticed yesterday that Jewish organizations around the country are holding their Israel Bonds sales conferences and banquets lately. They go after investors large and small, individuals as well as institutions.

dbroncos says: ‘The servile posture of American leadership reinforces the attitudes of people like Rabbi Yosef. “We must be a superior people to have the most powerful nation in the history of the world serving us on bended knee!”’

In an October 2010 sermon, Ovadia Yosef stated that “The sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews”. He said that Gentiles served a divine purpose: “Why are Gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why Gentiles were created.” In a Jerusalem Post article, Yosef compared Gentiles to donkeys whose life has the sole purpose to serve the master: “In Israel, death has no dominion over them… With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.” “Gentiles were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.”

Israel has elaborate defense systems against military attack and terrorism. Its defenses against its extremists, such as professional bigot Pamela Geller, are much more porous.

By Bradley Burston | Aug.21, 2012 | 12:38 PM

SAN FRANCISCO – Everyone knows how it works. Everyone knows what it sounds like. Everyone knows how easy it is to get away with it.

Everyone knows, deep down, that hatred feeds on tolerance. That however well-intentioned, a society’s forbearance for the toxic slur, for the poison of ethnic or religious or racial prejudice, does hatred invaluable service.

No one knows this better than professional bigots. People like Pamela Geller, who pass themselves off as supporters of a worthy cause even as their hatred and prejudice stain and undermine anything and everything worthy about that cause.

For years, in the guise of supporting Israel, Geller has engaged in promoting hatred of Islam. In recent weeks, in a campaign timed to coincide with Muslims’ observance of the sacred month of Ramadan, her American Freedom Defense Initiative has run caustic, self-styled “pro-Israel” advertisements on the sides of public transit buses in San Francisco.

“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,” the ads begin, white letters on black. Below it, in blue letters flanked by Stars of David, it read “Support Israel” and below that, in red, “Defeat Jihad.”

Last year, when Geller’s group tried to place the ads on public buses in New York, the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority rejected them as violating its prohibition on messages that demean individuals or groups. But in July, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the Geller group had been denied First Amendment guarantees of free speech. That same day, the ads went up in San Francisco.

Geller told ABC News that the purpose of the ads was to counter “fallacious and dangerous” ads on San Francisco area transit trains a year ago, urging cuts in U.S. aid to Israel. “If I had my way, the (“support Israel” ads) would be in every city in the United States of America, and if I can get the funding, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

To its credit, Muni, the San Francisco transit agency, did more than simply mount Geller’s message. It condemned the ads. Alongside them. In bus ads of its own.

In a move without precedent, Muni said in the new ads that its policy “prohibits discrimination based on national origin, religion, and other characteristics, and condemns statements that describe any group as ‘savages.'”

Muni spokesman Paul Rose said that while Muni is bound by the First Amendment, “Obviously we think the [Geller-sponsored] ads in place right now are repulsive and they definitely cross the line.”

Of late, in tandem with anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab attacks by radical settlers and Arab-hating Jewish youths in Israel and the territories (“He’s an Arab. He deserves to die,” a 14-year-old assault suspect told a court on Monday), there are troubling signs in America of a tendency to conflate hatred of Muslims with support for a Jewish state.

“The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures,” a “pro-Israel” NGO called the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights quotes Geller’s ideological inspiration as having said in a 1974 speech. “Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it’s the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are.”

In this light, Bay Area Jews are to be especially commended for denouncing Geller and her works. J., the community newspaper, said that “any right-thinking person, Jewish or not, must oppose these ads.” The Anti-Defamation League called the ads “highly offensive and inflammatory,” and the Jewish Community Relations Council and the American Jewish Committee issued a similar denunciation.

At root, this is what Geller denies: Israel can only exist as a democracy if it continually acts to foster and equalize the rights of its Arab citizens, not abrogate and dismiss them. It can only exist as a democracy if it actively works to end the unperson status of the Palestinians of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A true democracy cannot treat bigotry with understanding. It has to fight it, or its sense of democracy has no meaning.

At root, the Geller and pro-Kahane brand of “support of Israel,” is little more than a slash and burn Arab–hate that, if left unanswered, will tear apart the Israel and the Jewish community from within. It blinds people to solutions. It convinces people that there are no solutions. It persuades people that there are no options apart from violence, both of word and deed.

Israel has elaborate defense systems against military attack and terrorism. Its defenses against its own extremists are much more porous.

The Gellers and Kahanists attack Israel at the root. An Israel torn apart from within doesn’t need an external enemy to destroy it. The enemy is right here.

“…At root, this is what Geller denies: Israel can only exist as a democracy if it continually acts to foster and equalize the rights of its Arab citizens, not abrogate and dismiss them…”

Israel cannot exist as a democracy, nor does it. Theoretically, it could pull back within the 1967 borders and begin doing so — but I don’t think that’s psychologically possible.

Israel is locked into a course of ever-more vicious oppression and ever-more intolerable aggression that has a variety of possible outcomes — none of which, however, include the survival of Israel.

Let us consider Rabin. I don’t say he was a saint, but let’s consider him. Can anyone seriously imagine Israel electing such a figure now? And if they cannot, how are they going to pull back from this abyss they’re hurtling towards?

Forget Rabin, don´t make a saint out of him just because he was murdered. He ordered the IDF to break the bones and arms of stone throwing palestinian children. What kind of human being does such things?

Belligerent statements by Israeli Primer Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the potential for war between Israel and Iran are fueling headlines worldwide and have triggered public debate in Israel about the viability, benefit, and price of such a conflict. As prospects for a preventative Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear facilities continue to increase, the implications for Israel, US foreign policy, and the Middle East in general have become more numerous and densely complex by the day.

Join Israeli strategic affairs expert Yossi Alpher in a discussion of recent developments, including Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s trip to Israel, the appointment of Avi Dichter as Israeli Home Front Minister, President Shimon Peres’ comments opposing an Israeli attack without US assistance, and the leaked report of Israel’s alleged attack plans.

Alpher will also lay out a clear picture of how the hostile actions and rhetoric between Israel and Iran tie into Israeli politics, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hezbollah, Syria, and Egypt.

To receive a link of a recording made of the call, please email Alison Lynn at [email protected].

Where is the outrage against ‘Rabbiocracy” or “Rabbicracy” like we have against ‘Mullacrcay” or against specter of “Christian Theocracy” ?
May be we have captured that theme under the word ” Rabid” without knowing.

The Rabbi probably reflects the broad feelings of a larger number than one would wish to acknowledge. I notice the piece says he is ‘state funded’ which presumably means his income is paid by Israel and, by regression, the US tax payer. His be-braided attire reminds me of the Emperor Bokassa who most of us thought insane although he long retained the affection of the French President d’Estaing and even managed to survive rumours that he dined on human flesh.

“The Rabbi probably reflects the broad feelings of a larger number than one would wish to acknowledge. “

That’s what I was just thinking about. Shas gets 10% of the vote — but that doesn’t mean only 10% share its ideas.

It only means that 10% think those ideas take precedence over all other ideas. Many or even most of the Israeli electorate could share them — they just find other considerations more pressing.

An analogy might be the Green party. Green parties vary from fringe groups to substantial — but minority — players in some countries.

So in ____ 5% vote Green. Does that mean only 5% sympathize with the Greens’ environmental agenda? Not at all: 50% or even 70% might. It’s just that all but 5% think other considerations take precedence.

It’s at least worth proposing that Shas’ racial sentiments may be shared by an actual majority of Israeli Jews. I certainly see no reason to assume they’re rejected.

According to Yosef, the lives of non-Jews in Israel are safeguarded by divinity, to prevent losses to Jews.

‘… With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.’

speaking of the anti-semtic protocols, someone is conspiring to give me indigestion. who was it, hopmee or some other apologist for racism, that had argued on this site that ‘goyim’ was not a demeaning term, and not a reference to gentiles being the moral, intellectual, and physical equivalent of ruminants? anyone who defends this creep is in need of some long, deep psychoanalysis.

What all that gilded lace on Rabbi Ovadia Yosef robe? What kind of admiral’s hat is he wearing? It looks like a tailored, air-blown Arab hat with a streamed Nike bolt on it. He’s not the milkman in Fiddler On The Roof. How would Chagall do him?

What all that gilded lace on Rabbi Ovadia Yosef robe? What kind of admiral’s hat is he wearing?

Although he no longer holds the office of Sephardic chief rabbi, Yosef continues to wear the traditional garb of the Ottoman Hakham Bashi (Turk.- chief rabbi)/Rishon Le-Ziyyon of Jerusalem and Palestine. Apparently, they must still be custom ordered from Turkey.

The position of Hakham Bashi of Jerusalem and Palestine was created in the 19th century, but I presume the costume was at least modelled on that of the Hakham Bashi of Constantinople (and hence the entire empire) – a position dating back to the 15th century. I don’t know whether the costume was typically Jewish to begin with or not. There were traditional Jewish costumes of various kinds (both for hakhamim and ordinary folk, men and women) throughout the Ottoman empire, but these were generally variations on local costumes.

The rabbinical/cantorial “vestments” that developed in western Europe tend to resemble those of their ecclesiastical counterparts (Protestant and Catholic).

Standard “official” rabbinical garb in Israel today (with the exception of the chief Sephardic rabbi and a few oddballs like Amnon Yitzhak, who wears traditional, Yemenite Jewish robes and hat) tends to be a dark suit – often with a frock coat rather than a jacket – and a European hat (homburg or trilby/fedora). The “Polish elite” costume is generally worn by members of certain hasidic sects, rabbis and laymen alike.

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